A Moose Cha Cha! Introducing GoNoodle

What a week this has been! Going back to school after the summer holidays is always a shock to the system and when my alarm goes off at 6am each morning, it still takes me a few moments to remember that I have to go to school!

Luckily I have an amazing Year 2 class this year. They are bubbly, full of personality, enthusiastic and eager to learn. First thing on Friday morning (the children’s 4th day back), one child declared that they couldn’t wait until home time. I was quite dismayed by this, thinking that they were bored or that they weren’t enjoying being back at school. When I asked why they couldn’t wait until home time, the reply was, “So that we can sing ‘Class Dismissed!'” It was at that point that I realised GoNoodle had become an integral part of our classroom environment.

So what is GoNoodle? The GoNoodle website states:

We help kids channel their physical and emotional energy for good.

In basic terms, GoNoodle is a collection of different videos to help children become invigorated mentally and physically, as well as to help them become more mindful and to settle down in the classroom.

Here’s a video that GoNoodle has produced to explain the site:

What I love it that the videos are split into a series of channels, which makes it so easy to find what you want:

What’s also great is that the videos can also be sorted into categories:

So if I spot that my class are getting a bit sluggish, we can wake up with a guided dance, or if we need to calm down a little, I can play one of the calming videos that teaches the children how to concentrate on breathing.

My class particularly loves this video from the MooseTube channel (someone has uploaded this one to YouTube – the quality of the video is ten times better when viewed through the GoNoodle website):

For my class, an aspect that the kids particularly love is that we choose a “champ” for the class, who grows and develops, depending on how many videos we watch. This is how our champ currently looks:

He also gives us wise words each day, as you can see!

It’s hard to evangelise about how much I love GoNoodle without being able to show videos, so if you want a new way to do “wake and shake” style activities, or if you want a tool to help children become more mindful, sign up to GoNoodle today.

I can’t recommend it highly enough!

Plus, you’ll get to see why a child in my class couldn’t wait until home time so that they could sing the ‘Class Dismissed’ song!